Yesterday's trading: Flying Brands is Hunter's prey

Green fingered Scottish entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter is going shopping in Jersey. Via West Coast Capital, his private equity vehicle, he has made a takeover approach for Flying Brands sending shares of the gardening and flowers group up 17½p to 71½p.

Geoff Foster: Daily Mail

He sits on 29.9% of the St Lawrence-based company so is starting negotiations from a position of strength.

Hunter already owns Dobbies Garden Centres, Wyevale Garden Centres and the Blooms of Bressingham chain. Flying Brands is an obvious bolt-on with Hunter obviously wanting to get his hands on its Gardening Direct online business.

The shares are down 50%, the profits are poor and there was no dividend, so things aren't that good for the company. However it is sitting on £6m of freehold property and has net debt of only £2m. The year's share price high was 251¼p and word is if Sir Tom was to table a cash bid in the region of £50m, or £2 a share, everything in the garden would be rosy.

The Footsie was in need of a fertiliser at the opening as it fell 35 points. It rallied when dealers took the view that the 33% fall in profits of Barclays (6p dearer at 375p) and total credit crunch write-downs of £2bn could have been a lot worse.

It traded above 5,500 and 53.2 points higher before elevenses but soon boiled over after UK interest rates were left on hold at 5%. It closed 8.6 points off at 5,477.6.

Wall Street's early 166 point decline sparked late profit-taking in London. A sharp rise in weekly jobless claims, a large loss reported by giant insurer AIG and disappointing sales numbers from supermarket giant Wal-Mart dragged the Street of Dreams lower.

Royal Bank of Scotland eased 1¼p to 233p on expectations it will reveal the biggest loss
in British bank history. Analysts forecast it will bring the banking reporting season to a close with news it incurred a £1.7bn deficit in the first six months of the year because of credit crunch-related writedowns.

Chairman Sir Tom McKillop's days are numbered and many say chief executive Sir Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin will not be in the job either this time next year.

Since raising £281m in a share placing at 222p in May, Group 4 Securicor has underperformed and touched a low of 189p. Buyers have since sniffed around at the lower levels and yesterday chased the stock 9.1p higher to 205p. Collins Stewart is bullish ahead of the interims on August 27 and has a target price of 313p.

Struggling pic 'n' mix retailer Woolworths improved ½p more to 6½p on hearing that tycoon Ardeshir Naghshineh, landlord of Centre Point in London's West End, had increased his shareholding to 10.2% from 9.68%. Turnover welled to 28.2m.

Boosted by a star performance from its spreadbetting business Capital Spreads, fullyear pre-tax profits at London Capital jumped 52% to £5.43m on revenues 54% higher at £12.5m.